More than 2,500 Nigerians caught in the fighting between Islamic militants and government forces have fled their homes in the northern part of the country, a Red Cross spokeswoman said Wednesday. More than 400 people have been killed, and 150 bodies were lying in the general hospital at Maiduguri, according to Aliyu Maikanu, a Red Cross disaster officer in the northeast. Most of the violence has been on the outskirts of the city, officials said. "It's a terrible situation for ...

About 300 people have been killed in a spate of violence in northern Nigeria, the president of a human rights group said Tuesday. The violence has pitted Islamic militants against government police and troops in the north-central part of the nation, officials said. Attacks continued Tuesday in the suburbs of the northern city of Maiduguri, said Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress, a human rights organization based in northern Nigeria. People there are seeking refuge in police and ...

At least 40 people were killed as Islamic militants battled Nigerian government police and troops Sunday and Monday in the north-central part of the nation, officials said. Police and troops were dispatched to the militants' hideouts after militants began attacks on government establishments early Sunday, said Mohamed Maigari, spokesman for Nigeria's Bauchi state. As authorities exchanged fire with the militants, 40 people, including one soldier, were killed, Maigari said. In addition, some 215 people were arrested in Bauchi, he said. ...

Opposition candidates are charging fraud in Indonesia's election, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won by a more than two-to-one edge over his nearest challenger. Yudhoyono won 60.8 percent of the vote, compared with 26.8 percent for former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and 12.4 percent for Vice President Yusuf Kalla, according to numbers released Friday by Indonesia's National Election Commission. The votes were counted under heavy security after the terrorist attacks on two Jakarta hotels July 17. Police blocked off the road ...

On the streets of the cities and towns of China's northwestern region of Xinjiang you can hear complaints from the Uighur minority group about restrictions on the Islamic religion they practice, their Turkic language or their culture, which is most closely linked to the lands of Central Asia. But in interviews in Urumqi, the regional capital that exploded with ethnic rioting last week that left 184 dead, the single most common complaint of Uighur residents is that they feel ...

A church in Iraq was bombed Monday, the seventh Christian house of worship in the country to be bombed in three days. At least three children were wounded in Monday's attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, an Interior Ministry official told CNN. The car bomb exploded in the morning, damaging the church in the al-Faisaliya district of eastern Mosul. Six churches in and around Baghdad were bombed over the weekend, leaving four dead, officials told CNN. A total ...

Four Baghdad churches were bombed in less than 24 hours and eight civilians were wounded, officials said Sunday. Three bombs exploded outside churches Sunday afternoon, wounding the civilians, an Interior Ministry official said. The bombs detonated within a 15-minute span, between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. Two of the churches are in central Baghdad's al-Karrada district, and the third is in al-Ghadeer in eastern Baghdad. The churches were damaged in the bombings, the official said. Saturday night, a church in western ...

Han Chinese protesters were out in the streets, not far from our hotel near the People's Square, on Tuesday. A lot of the Han Chinese own shops in the area and there are some hospitals in the vicinity. When we saw the protesters marching in the streets, we simply followed them. It was, in a way, a little dicey, because obviously there was raw emotion among them. There is also raw emotion on the part of the Uyghurs. So, we ...

The show, called "Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor," or "Penitents Compete," features a Muslim imam, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Buddhist monk attempting to persuade 10 atheists of the merits of their religion, according to CNN Turk. If they succeed, the contestants are rewarded with a pilgrimage to one of their chosen faith's most sacred sites -- Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for converts to Judaism, a trip to Tibet for Buddhists and the chance to visit Ephesus and the ...

Iran's ruling system is "going to the slaughterhouse" because of the national outrage over last week's fraudulent presidential election, the Facebook page of Iran's top opposition presidential candidate quoted him Saturday as saying. The post, attributed to Mir Hossein Moussavi, reasserted his call for a new election to be overseen by an independent council. The authenticity of the message could not be established. It was posted in Farsi and translated by CNN. The post was responding to Iran's supreme leader ...